New album digs up rare ’60s Chicago garage rock from Arlington Heights’ The Cellar

As they crisscrossed the country in the late 1960s, the likes of The Who, Cream, The Yardbirds and Buffalo Springfield famously made stops at the legendary Arlington Heights teen music club, The Cellar.

But on an average weekend there, you were more likely to see and hear local bands who otherwise would be playing in their parents’ garages.

Many of those groups never made it big; some only put out a couple hundred 45s, used mostly as business cards to get gigs.

“Ours lasted maybe a year and a half ’til somebody left and went to college. A lot of people got drafted,” said Bill St. John, who played bass guitar with The High Numbers. “Most of the garage bands like ours — you cut a record because it was cool to say you cut a record. But nobody was going to get it played on the radio or anything like that.”

Now bands like The High Numbers — who took their name from The Who, who gave that earlier title up — are getting credit for their place in local music history on a new album that pays homage to the old Northwest suburban teen hangout.

“A Blast From The Cellar! Lost Gems From The ’60s Garage Rock Explosion” is a collection of 16 deep tracks from 11 of the bands who performed there.

A compilation of 1960s Chicago garage bands who performed at The Cellar in Arlington Heights is being released Sept. 5, by Villa Park-based Cheap Kiss Records.
Courtesy of Pete Kuehl

St. John — now 75, an Elgin resident and retired after a career as CEO of a nonprofit — coproduced the record with Arlington Heights resident Sean Hoffman.

Hoffman scoured album stacks, the internet — and even the basement of The Cellar’s owner/promoter Paul Sampson — to find old vinyl, acetates, reel-to-reel tapes and cassettes containing rare songs.

The author of a paperback history on The Cellar set to be published next year by Chicago-based HoZac Books, Hoffman enlisted fellow Arlington Heights resident Pete Kuehl for help with the compilation. Pressed on 180 gram red vinyl, the album is the sixth from Kuehl and business partner Christopher Grey’s independent Cheap Kiss Records label.

They arranged to have the old tracks digitized by Grammy-nominated producer Liam Davis, who fixed varying bass, treble and vocal levels and remastered the sound quality to make the songs album ready.

Cheap Kiss’ used records shop — inside the Cornerstone Used Books store at 22 S. Villa Ave. in Villa Park — is where the album will be officially released Sept. 5. Preorders are being taken at cheapkissrecords.com.

An album release show is also scheduled for Oct. 15, at Hey Nonny — the live music venue of this era in downtown Arlington Heights — where singer-songwriter Phil Angotti and band will perform selections from the album. They’ll be joined on stage by members of at least five of the original bands. Standing room only tickets remain.

“It’s going to be a celebration of the club and the album,” Kuehl said.

Kuehl, 58, and Hoffman, 57, may still have been in diapers toward the end of The Cellar’s run from 1965 to 1970. But both say they were always fascinated by its history as they grew up in Arlington Heights and heard stories from those who hung out there and the music of those who played there.

“My dad used to go to The Cellar,” Hoffman said. “When I was a kid he would talk about it all the time. … But as I grew up and I became a music fan, it just hit me so hard that all these people had played there: Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend. And then when I started finding the local bands, I was just blown away at how great everything was.”

This Daily Herald photo from 1965 is featured on the back of a new album that pays tribute to the Arlington Heights teen music club The Cellar.
Daily Herald File Photo, 1965

On a recent Friday afternoon at More Brewing Company just down the block from the record shop, the music enthusiasts toasted the forthcoming album release with Czech pilsners — apropos, since the 500 records were pressed at a plant in the Czech Republic — while they shared music and memories of their favorite local bands. Among them:

• The Shadows of Knight, the club’s house band of Prospect High School students led by the dynamic Jimy Sohns, whose belted-out version of “Gloria” got major airplay on WLS and WCFL and became a national hit.

• Saturday’s Children, who wore suits and emulated The Beatles. “All The Cellar dwellers I speak to always talk about how they loved The Shadows of Knight, but Saturday’s Children was their favorite,” Hoffman said.

• The Mauds, led by soulful frontman Jimy Rogers. “Everyone always says that the records don’t capture how great they really were. They were much more of a live act,” Hoffman said.

• The Same, an all-female band who got to Los Angeles to record two songs, but the producers forbid them from playing their own instruments in favor of studio musicians.

Previously unreleased numbers from the last three groups are featured on the album, including a track from one of The Same’s rehearsal tapes.

“I thought it was important to have a recording of them actually playing,” Kuehl said. “We wanted that on there.”

The album project started with St. John’s list of local bands he remembered seeing at The Cellar (his group played there only once, but he regularly worked at the pop stand and coat check). They decided to focus on lesser-known tunes, while steering clear of songs already on other compilations.

St. John spent nearly two years tracking down surviving members to ask permission to use their music. Even if the musicians were enthused, sometimes decades-old legalities and copyrights sometimes prevented it, as was the case with The Shadows of Knight.

Meanwhile, Hoffman penned the liner notes on the record sleeve, tucked inside a gatefold sleeve that has rare photos of the bands, fans and memorabilia from The Cellar. Some of the photos — of teens attending The Beau Brummels show in 1965 — are from the Daily Herald archives.

Another is from Kuehl’s family friend, Gene Good, who was lead singer of The Raevns.

Audience members listen to The Raevns lead singer Gene Good during a performance at The Cellar in the 1960s.
Courtesy of Pete Kuehl

“I love the expressions on the girls’ faces,” said Kuehl, referring to those watching Good on stage. “Some look goo-goo eyed. Some looked confused.”

With the Baby Boom in full swing and enrollments spiking at high schools, Chicago suburbia of the 1960s was the setting for a number of music clubs where teens could go.

But there was just something special about The Cellar, the record producers contend.

“It had a vibe,” said St. John. “That’s what you did every Friday and Saturday night. That’s just where you went.”

“The Cellar had the cream of the crop of the bands,” Hoffman added. “The Cellar did it first, and did it the best.”